Biography[edit]

McDermott was born in New York City to John J. and Helen Kelly McDermott.^[2] He was the first of eight children in a lower-middle class family.^[3] He earned an undergraduate degree in 1953 at St. Francis College. He went to Fordham University to complete a master's degree and a Ph.D. in 1959. (Dissertation title: "Experience is Pedagogical: the genesis and essence of the American nineteenth century notion of experience"). He completed a postdoctoral fellowship at Union Theological Graduate School. McDermott joined the faculty of Queens College, City University of New York, where he stayed until he took a position at Texas A&M University as philosophy professor and department head in 1977.^[4]


At Texas A&M, McDermott called the school's first faculty meeting in 1983. That meeting resulted in the formation of the school's faculty senate and McDermott was the group's first speaker.^[3] That year he won a Distinguished Achievement Award in Teaching from the university.^[5] He founded the College of Medicine's Humanities in Medicine Department, and he was the department head from 1983 to 1990.^[1] In 2012, McDermott was named the founding director of the school's Community of Faculty Retirees.^[3]


A focus of McDermott's work is the connection between American philosophy and culture. He compiled and introduced volumes of writing by William James, Josiah Royce and John Dewey.^[6] He was president of the Society for the Advancement of American Philosophy from 1978 to 1980^[7] and of the William James Society in 2001-2002.^[8] In 2016, he was awarded the society's first Lifetime Achievement Award.^[9] He was named a Distinguished Fellow of the American Montessori Society in 1980.^[2]


McDermott died on September 30, 2018. He is survived by his second wife, Patricia,^[10] and five children from his first marriage. McDermott was very involved in Alcoholics Anonymous, and when he died he had been sober for 30 years.^[2]